Obama: Golly, Sanders is kind of a one-note guy

posted at 12:01 pm on January 25, 2016 by Ed Morrissey

Alternate headline: Hopenchange Endorses Status Quo Ante. Remember when Barack Obama decided to run for president as the Democratic Party prepared itself for a coronation and the Clinton Restoration in 2007, Obama’s message was that the country needed change and his party had to look to the future. Well, Obama’s seen the future, and in this interview with Politico’s Glenn Thrush, he apparently prefers the past. While the president didn’t criticize Bernie Sanders, he made his preference known — and provided all sorts of irony along the way:

Obama didn’t utter an unkind word about Sanders, who has been respectfully critical of his administration’s reluctance to prosecute Wall Street executives and his decision to abandon a single-payer health care system as politically impractical. But he was kinder to Clinton. When I asked Obama whether he thought Sanders needed to expand his horizons, if the Vermont senator was too much a one-issue candidate too narrowly focused on income inequality, the presidente didn’t dispute the assertion.

Gesturing toward the Resolute Desk, with its spread-winged eagle seal, first brought into the Oval Office by John F. Kennedy, Obama said of Sanders: “Well, I don’t want to play political consultant, because obviously what he’s doing is working. I will say that the longer you go in the process, the more you’re going to have to pass a series of hurdles that the voters are going to put in front of you.”

Then he added: “As you’ll recall, I was sitting at my desk there just a little over a week ago … writing my State of the Union speech, and somebody walks in and says, ‘A couple of our sailors wandered into Iranian waters’” — and here he stopped to chuckle in disbelief — “that’s maybe a dramatic example, but not an unusual example of the job.”

Ahem. That example might be even more dramatic if there was any evidence that it changed Obama’s approach to the State of the Union speech. Obama only mentioned Iran once, and then it was to brag about the success of his diplomatic efforts. The lack of mention of the ten captured American sailors raised eyebrows across the board:

That’s why we built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. As we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has avoided another war.

If Obama is arguing that Sanders might not be qualified to answer a 3 AM call because of his focus on the economy, that’s yet another level of irony. In the most glaring example of a 3 AM call, the Obama administration at best let it ring off the hook while four Americans died in Benghazi in a series of attacks that lasted for hours. Who else dropped the ball on Benghazi, at the very least? Hillary Clinton. Even more amusingly, this was actually the same argument that Hillary used against Obama in a sharp attack ad almost exactly eight years ago.

But more broadly, this is a curious endorsement of the status quo ante against which Obama won in 2007-8. It doesn’t even make sense in a defending-his-administration perspective, since the only diplomatic efforts Obama brags about are those which came under John Kerry — TPP and the Iranian nuclear deal. Hillary represents exactly what she did in 2007-8 — a return to Clintonism, a look backward rather than forward, only this time with the baggage of the Clinton Foundation weighing much more heavily on Democrats. This time around, Democrats have to deal with an FBI probe into potential corruption, a wrinkle that didn’t exist eight years ago, in large part because Hillary wasn’t in position to manipulate communications and executive power for the benefit of her cronies and her own pocketbook.

This might be the most blatant signal yet that Obama had no real interest in hope and change — he just wanted power for himself. And now that he’s had it, he has no problem serving the interest of the Democrats’ longtime power brokers rather than championing change of any other sort.

“This might be the most blatant signal yet that Obama had no real interest in hope and change — he just wanted power for himself. And now that he’s had it, he has no problem serving the interest of the Democrats’ longtime power brokers rather than championing change of any other sort.”

No it means that Hillary has made a deal w Obama to defend and make permanent his legacy. That’s been obvious in her statements lately and now he’s starting to do his part for her.

Hillary is not sweating this email investigation because she knows only Loretta Lynch, aka Obama, can bring charges.

Yup the fix is in…

sandee on January 25, 2016 at 12:17 PM

Here’s another scenario:

Obama is taking small whacks at Bernie to discount him and to appear to support Hillary. What in fact he’s doing is setting up Joe Biden as the savior once he gives Loretta Lynch the green light to bring charges against Hillary based on the FBI investigation.

Hillary is not sweating this email investigation because she knows only Loretta Lynch, aka Obama, can bring charges.

HugoDrax on January 25, 2016 at 12:12 PM

My money is on Obama helping her get indicted. Biden or even Warren comes in for the rescue. Obama’s legacy is preserved. He pretty much destroys the Clintons forever. But he pardons Hillary before leaving office “for the good of the country,” and Clintonites have to give him his due.

Obama had better be worried about Clinton getting indicted. She was his Sec of State. It plays badly for his “legacy”.

libfreesMom on January 25, 2016 at 12:12 PM

If Obama ever saw classified material on one of Hillary or her staffers non .gov email addresses and failed to report it, he has also violated confidential information statutes. My understanding is he can’t pardon himself, so there remains a possibility that Obama could be prosecuted.

If Obama ever saw classified material on one of Hillary or her staffers non .gov email addresses and failed to report it, he has also violated confidential information statutes. My understanding is he can’t pardon himself, so there remains a possibility that Obama could be prosecuted.

I can dream.

talkingpoints on January 25, 2016 at 12:37 PM

Did Obama have an official email address? What has the FBI found in the deleted emails from Hillary’s server?

As it turns out, a candidate can be indicted and still be sworn in on inauguration day. And the feeling is that the trial to convict her would not conclude before being sworn in in January 2017. So essentially, if Obama green lights Lynch, he could be making a big mistake. He’d be a civilian in Hawaii, and Hillary, a very vengeful woman, would be president of the US.

This might be the most blatant signal yet that Obama had no real interest in hope and change — he just wanted power for himself.

Water is wet and the sky is blue.

On a related note, you know who else can’t get enough of the Obozo’s? Hollywood.

Sundance: As the Obamas Fall in Love, So Will You

There are cat lovers, and there are dog lovers. Some people drink Coke, and others, for some unaccountable reason, prefer Pepsi. And then we’ve got the male lead of today’s Sundance film Southside With You, who presents the woman he’s wooing with a piece of pie, despite the fact that she’s an ice-cream kind of girl. She asks him how can he possibly be Team Pie in a world where chocolate ice cream exists, and he replies with a regretful smile, “A summer of working at Baskin-Robbins will do that to you.” Can this pie guy and our ice-cream lady make it work, despite what might seem like irreconcilable differences on their very first date?

Given that the man is a young Barack Obama, and the woman is his eventual wife Michelle Robinson, you’d have to give this coupling pretty good odds, dessert be damned. And that knowledge of what comes next is one of the primary delights of Southside With You, the charming feature debut from Richard Tanne that chronicles the very first romantic day between the future First Couple (played by Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter). On any promising first date, it’s tempting to project a lifetime of possibility onto a scant few hours: If this goes well, could I see myself making a life with this person? Given where both Barack and Michelle’s lives end up, the audience can’t help but share in their tentative optimism, too.http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/the-obamas-fall-in-love-so-will-you.html

They can’t even wait for them to leave the WH to do a movie on them. Makes me want to puke!

If Obama ever saw classified material on one of Hillary or her staffers non .gov email addresses and failed to report it, he has also violated confidential information statutes. My understanding is he can’t pardon himself, so there remains a possibility that Obama could be prosecuted.

What in fact he’s doing is setting up Joe Biden as the savior once he gives Loretta Lynch the green light to bring charges against Hillary based on the FBI investigation.

WisRich on January 25, 2016 at 12:24 PM

Ain’t gonna happen. How does Bambi limit the damage to only Hillary and her cronies when the whole WH was sending e-mail to that server and had to know that Hillary was working outside of security protocols?

Nope. The fix is in. It goes like this.

1. FBI declines to recommend prosecution because blah-blah-blah.
Forget all of this nonsense about the “tough prosecutor with integrity” at the FBI. He’ll cave to political pressure b/c he wouldn’t have this job if didn’t owe political favors.

2. Angry investigators at the FBI leak all sorts of damaging info.
Big deal. Clinton has already laid to the ground work for that by spreading the meme that the FBI is full of Republican turncoats.

3. The MSM reports it as “Hillary is cleared” onto the nomination.

What? You thought that the fact that Hillary is guilty is important? Please. She’s too big to jail. End.of.Story

Obama, “So anyway I get a call from Hillary about Benghazi. Well, actually I didn’t…it was the CIA that told me…no…they didn’t, because they were part of the gun running there that I ordered…so actually I heard about Benghazi while watching CNN and surfing YouTube looking for the latest Beyonce video…and thought the first thing we gotta do is protect the ambassador…no, that’s not true…the first thing was cover it up.Good thing I was on YouTube looking for a video at the time…”